Pia Maria Ahlback

Lecturer, Researcher in Comparative Literature, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Ahlbäck will examine a small number of spatial examples, urban and others, in the light of the phenomenological thought of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. She will also make use of the concepts of the “chronotope”, which was devised by Russian literary theoretician Mikhail Bakhtin, and the “heterotopia,” conceived by the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Her purpose in utilizing these thoughts and concepts is to facilitate a way of thinking imaginatively about climate change that is related to the Western tradition of utopias/dystopias. Ultimately, she will attempt to answers questions about the challenges this particular approach presents and its implications for current urban spatial thinking.